Many industrial operations present potentials for environmental hazards because they can produce unacceptable levels of contamination during their operation. To mitigate such hazards State and Federal laws often require active monitoring and remediation of environmental contamination. Sometimes such monitoring and remediation requires drawing fluid samples from subterranean reservoirs to enable analysis and examination of the non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) in the reservoir.
NAPL's typically do not mix well with water. Such mixing incompatibilities result is sets of material properties that can be exploited via phase stratification and separation for sampling, monitoring, and analyses of the NAPLs. In the prior art phase stratification and separation was typically performed using on-site sampling devices and off-site analysis of the samples. This use of on-site and then off-site devices and agencies was rather expensive and slow, could lead to erroneous results, and separated the gathering and analysis in a manner that was often not conducive to the needs of site personal and government monitors.
In view of the foregoing problems with prior art phase stratification and separation it would be advantageous to have a portable device that could sample on-site and on-demand and that could enable fast analytical results. Beneficially such a portable phase stratification and separation device could perform NAPL sampling and analysis quickly and easily. Ideally such a portable phase stratification and separation device would be both cost effective and accurate.